“Carlos could not sit still. When teaching mindfulness in his classroom, I’d get his attention for one moment and then literally within seconds he was turning around to talk to the person behind him. This happened continuously. I work with up to 300 kids at a school in a day. By this point, I’ve realized there’s no way I’m going to remember all of the students’ names. Yet somehow, I always seem to learn the names of the “challenging” students like Carlos right away. “Carlos, please don’t …..”. You get the picture.

Children long for attention, even if it’s “negative attention”. The Mindful Schools staff helped me become aware that “being seen” was what was at play, so why not give him attention when he was being “good” or for simply being Carlos. The next day as I walked into his class, instead of walking to the middle of the room and giving the mindfulness instructions like I always did, I first walked up to Carlos. I looked him straight in the eyes and with a big smile on my face I quietly said to him, “It’s so good to see you Carlos!” With rapt attention his eyes were on me and for the remainder of the class. I did this each day I came to his class, and Carlos became my most attentive student. I saw Carlos and Carlos felt seen.

On my last day at that same school, when I arrived at one of the other classrooms, I noticed that Christopher’s chair was upside down on his desk and he wasn’t there. Christopher was another “challenging student”, and I quickly found out that he’d been sent to “detention” during school that day. Since this was my last day at the school, I wanted to have some closure with him. As I was passing through the hallway during the break, there he was in the office. It was obvious he was going through a hard time. I walked in the office and said, “Christopher, I’ve been looking all over for you.” His response was, “You have? Why?” ” I wanted to say good bye to you, today is my last day.” For 20 minutes I talked to him about what I did in his class, he couldn’t take his eyes off of me. When I got up to leave and went to my next class, there he was quietly following me like a sweet puppy dog. I saw Christopher, Christopher felt seen.

Mindfulness is about being present. When I am caught in expectations of how I want children to behave, it is difficult to be present and to stay with my highest intention and with what is actually going on in the moment. This can easily lead to frustration. Nothing works or feels right when I teach out of a frustrated state of mind. Mindfulness gives me the space to not take the situation personally and to see what is actually taking place and what is needed in that moment, instead of being frustrated and reactive. By being mindful myself as a teacher, I find students learn best; by example.

Michael Katz
Storyteller
http://www.storytellermichael.com

“Holding a grudge is letting someone live rent-free in your head.”

“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.”

For a few moments, we enjoy the wisdom, but soon we are naturally whisked back to our busy lives… and often enough, the next time we should have applied the wisdom, we find ourselves in old reactionary patterns. And it’s not just us — children in school face a similar challenge of trying to apply what they’ve been told in the heat of the moment.

So how do we take wise quotes and actually begin to incorporate their wisdom into our lives, since they always seem to be easier said than done? Fundamentally, it’s a question of how we change habits. And we all know how hard that can be!

Fortunately, mindfulness is a perfect tool to help us change habits. Each time we practice mindfulness, we improve our ability to notice what is going on in our thoughts, our emotions, and our senses. We don’t need to start by changing anything — we simply need to notice what we are doing.

As we begin trying to change a habit, we may find that it takes hours or even days to realize that we were acting, speaking, or thinking in a way we would prefer to change. Gradually, we’ll find that the time between the incidents and our recognition of them reduces. Eventually, that time becomes so small that we catch ourselves just after the incident. The habit still hasn’t changed, but from there, we will soon find that we can actually catch ourselves before we act, speak, or think in an unwholesome way.

We may find that we are able to change the habit in certain circumstances, but not in others. That too will change — over time, we can continue to be mindful even in more stressful situations.

It’s important to realize that it’s a gradual process, which helps us to be patient and realistic. But what you will find is that as your mindfulness practice strengthens, changing habits becomes easier. The more time you spend building up your capacity for mindfulness, the easier it will be to apply it when you need it most.

One way to think of mindful eating is to imagine that you are a scientist examining your food for the first time. Give your full attention to the whole experience, from observing the appearance and presentation of food to eating it carefully to fully experience its various flavors. If you do this, you may find that a common meal becomes a richer experience.

Here’s how to try the exercise. You can use a raisin, a piece of chocolate, or even an entire meal as your object for mindful eating.

• Start by looking at what you are planning to eat. What do you notice visually?
• Now, smell the food carefully.  What do you notice?
• If applicable, do you notice any sounds?  If you’re eating something like a raisin, try holding it close to your ear as you squeeze it gently. Or if you’re unwrapping a chocolate, listen to the crinkles of the wrapper as you unfold it.
• What do you feel with your fingers? Is the food warm or cold? Is it smooth, rough, or sticky?
• Now, put the piece of food on your tongue, but don’t chew on it yet. Just leave it on your tongue and notice how it feels in your mouth. Do you taste anything yet? What activity do you notice in your mouth?
• Start chewing it, very slowly, just one bite at a time. Notice how the tastes change as you chew.
• Try to notice when you swallow, and see how far you can feel the food into your body.

The beautiful thing is that by applying this idea of eating mindfully, you can learn to be more present while you eat. In this way, we become more aware of our reactions to food and eating, as well as our habits around meal time. Also, eating mindfully doesn’t have to mean eating slowly. As you know what to pay attention to, you can eat at any speed.

You may end up enjoying food that you like even more while becoming more tolerant of food that you may not like as much. In some cases, you may learn to appreciate flavors you previously discounted. In other cases, you might identify new flavors that you enjoy. And, you may also find that by adding a little more space between stimulus and response, you can decrease the emotional intensity of eating food you dislike.

However, there is much more to mindfulness. Ultimately, we can learn to be mindful of anything we are experiencing – seeing, hearing, walking, eating, emotions, thoughts, etc. The purpose of utilizing our breath is to anchor the mind/attention in order to 1. build concentration and 2. know where our mind is.

Staying focused on any one thing strengthens concentration allowing us to be mindful of all our experience with more clarity and strength of mind. Staying focused on something also lets you know when your mind has wandered. If you are attempting to stay focused on your breath and suddenly you realize you have been thinking for some time, you know you have lost mindfulness. Having one thing to return to creates a good “home-base” or anchor for your attention.

With focus and awareness of where your mind is, you can remain mindful of breathing or you can choose to be mindful of any other experience. Being mindful of your range of experience can reveal underlying thoughts and habits of mind that are negative or don’t serve you. Noticing these thoughts and habits is the first step in changing them. Therefore, it’s important to expand your mindfulness beyond your breathing. Try listening to our guided audio instructions to start learning how to do this.

1. Learning a new skill is a mix of theory and practice. Developing a new skill starts with someone explaining the basics of it to us — how to move our fingers to play the piano, or how to swing a tennis racket. But of course, just knowing the theory isn’t enough — we also have to practice by doing exercises. Mindfulness is the same way. Our in-class program provides exercises for children, and our training courses provide exercises for adults. By repeating these exercises, Mindful Schools helps children and adults cultivate the skill of mindfulness.

2. Every day is different. In whatever we do, we have good days and bad days. Some days at work, our mind just isn’t as sharp as others. If we play the piano, our fingers just may not move the way we want, or our timing may be off when we play our favorite sport. Other days everything comes very easily. We have all experienced these ups and downs, which are part of life. We need to accept them without holding onto ideal versions of ourselves from our best days. Again, mindfulness is the same way. Depending on what’s going on in our life, our mind may be more distracted on some days, and clearer on others.

3. Practice brings improvement over time. Even though we have ups and downs, as we practice a skill over time, we’ll find that our down days aren’t as bad. For example, a “bad day” for someone who’s been playing tennis for a week will be quite different from a “bad day” for someone who’s been playing tennis for years. In fact, the beginner will probably look at the more experienced player’s bad day and wish for that on any day! The benefits of mindfulness are not as externally obvious, but the same trends apply. As we develop our mindfulness, we can increase the space between stimulus and our reactions, giving us the ability to respond skillfully and to access peace more easily, and often. (A diagram explaining this is on our web site.)

4. As our skill level increases, we can recover more easily after breaks. When we are beginning to learn something, every day of practice matters a great deal, and we tend to forget quickly. But as we gain experience, our skill becomes more robust and we are able to bring our level up more quickly even after a long break. Someone who played music rigorously as a child can channel that experience even decades later. A similar example from the realm of mindfulness is the ability to concentrate mindfully for longer periods of time, or to apply mindfulness more readily in challenging real-world situations. It’s worth practicing more when we can, because we will be able to recover our skill more easily when the inevitable lapses in practice time come our way.

5. Improvement takes effort. In our first attempt, we wouldn’t expect to play the piano like a concert pianist, nor to play tennis like a seasoned pro. This is so obvious to us that we spend many hours each week, often for years, to increase our skill level at our hobbies. What if we took the same approach to developing our mental strength, setting aside similar lengths of time to practice and cultivate mindfulness? We would be far better equipped to handle stress, to increase our own well bring, and to improve our resilience by growing our sense of gratitude. Clearly, mindfulness is a hobby that worth adding to our list!

Answer:
This is an important, ongoing conversation in the mindfulness in education movement.
Following are some thoughts from Mindful Schools.

A teacher who has a mindfulness practice brings a certain presence with them into the
classroom. They are indirectly teaching students what it’s like to use mindfulness, or to
be mindful in various situations.

If they use their mindfulness in times of stress or difficulty, they are demonstrating
healthy, skillful responses without even mentioning mindfulness. When they are able
to be fully present with a student or class, the students learn what good listening and
kindness is through observation. When a teacher can remain calm amidst chaos, students
witness that as a possibility for themselves.

Teachers with mindful qualities teach mindfulness through their actions; they might be
less reactive and more patient, they might have gentler or kinder speech, students might
feel more comfortable and safer in their classroom. Mindful qualities can be inherent
in a teacher who has never learned mindfulness, or they can be cultivated through a
mindfulness practice.

When these teachers decide to teach their students mindfulness directly through
mindfulness techniques and lessons, you can be confident that the impact will be positive.

The question that is arising in the mindfulness in education movement is whether
teachers without training in mindfulness can effectively deliver mindfulness lessons to
students.

The biggest concern is probably that mindfulness could be misunderstood, misused or
misrepresented. If a teacher uses mindfulness as a punishment or disciplinary tool, they
have misused mindfulness. If a teacher tells students to use mindful breathing when they
are upset but the teacher him/herself cannot access the same tool, students are getting
conflicting information. Mindfulness invites a certain quality of stillness, acceptance,
and patience. If students’ minds calm down during mindfulness, it would be deeply
unfortunate for a teacher to behave in a contradictory way.

Also, students will often have questions about mindfulness. Only an experienced
practitioner will be able to answer all questions appropriately. This is particularly true as
students get older.

On the other hand, many of the mindfulness instructions are quite simple and could
potentially be incorporated for a couple minutes each day. The key is having teachers
who are at least interested in mindfulness and who are confident that their students
would benefit from the lessons. Inevitably, the more training classroom teachers have
in mindfulness for themselves, the more they will be able to demonstrate its indirect
application throughout the day. Also, the more training classroom teachers have in how
to deliver mindfulness instructions to students, the more likely mindfulness will find its
way into the school day directly.

The good news is that teachers will know right away if mindfulness is proving easy to
implement or whether they need more training.

Mindful Schools requires all teachers who use our curriculum to receive at least 12 hours
of training in mindfulness (through our Mindfulness Fundamentals class or equivalent
experience). We also provide a detailed Curriculum Training. Please see our training page or email info@mindfulschools.org for more information.

Warmly,
Megan and the Mindful Schools Team

Over the past three and a half years, our team has had the opportunity to teach more than 8,500 students and more than 1200 educators, parents and other professionals. From this
work, we have developed an extensive knowledge and broad perspective of mindfulness in education.

For a long time we have wanted to acknowledge the community that has emerged through our in-class and professional trainings. We have received many questions over the years and many times the questions we receive are relevant to many more people than the one person asking. With this blog we hope to share will all of you what we’ ve learned through our team’ s collective experience.

Please note that this blog is based on our experience to date and the ideas and opinions of the team we’ ve developed. We appreciate that there will be many ongoing conversations as topics arise here.

Please feel free to send comments or questions about mindfulness in education to info@mindfulschools.org. We look forward to seeing this movement unfold and evolve with all of you.

Warmly,
Megan and the Mindful Schools Team

Welcome to our new web site and blog!  In addition to opening up our layout to fit all the good stuff we have to share, we’ve also added more resources, such as a printable version of our brochure, that you can use to convince people you know about the benefits of a mindfulness program.

As our program has grown, we’ve realized that a blog is a perfect place to share some of the insights we come across as we work in classrooms and with adults.  So here it is!

We would be grateful for any help in sharing the web site and blog with more people, as we know there are is a huge unmet demand for mindfulness both for children and for adults.

Thank you so much for visiting!